


These Dark Woods

by angelsarenamederika



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, LGBT Relationship, Post-Pacifist Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-11 02:01:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5609623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelsarenamederika/pseuds/angelsarenamederika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The monsters leave the underground in groups at first. </p><p>Families with families, seeking safety in numbers despite the lack of danger. Then it’s friends with friends, all of them joining hands, carrying each others bags and sharing food as they walk out from beneath the earth for the first and last time. </p><p>There are those who linger. Stragglers who stay for as long as they can, then leave their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs. </p><p>They — Fuku, Grillby, Heats Flamesman — stay behind just a bit longer. Just to make sure everyone makes it out safely, just to finish packing up the restaurant. Just to say goodbye to the place they called home for decades.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Dark Woods

**Author's Note:**

> The Skateboard Girl from Hotland is referred to as Ska. 
> 
> There is no in game connection between Fuku Fire and Grillby aside from the wiki stating that they bare some resemblance to each other. In this story, they are father and daughter.

Fuku wakes up on the floor of the restaurant after it all ends. Blank space - white light, receding from her vision. She lays there for a moment, eyes closed and just breathing, focusing on the slight pressure of where her forehead meets the scratched mahogany floor. Her consciousness still settling back into her body.

Then she moves, easing herself into a sitting position. Her head lolls left and she peers over her shoulder. 

Grillby lays a few feet away. A memory stirs and she remembers her hand grazing the wall in an attempt to ease her fall, footsteps and his half asked question before he plummeted down too. Fuku starts to rise but the stutter in her steps knocks her back down to her knees. So she crawls to where he lays, presses a hand to his shoulder and shakes him. 

“Dad. Dad —“

He lurches upright then slumps forward, eyes squeezed shut. He blinks and shifts, sitting up, scooting back to lean against the wall. He stares at the adjacent wall and the tension in his shoulders eases as everything slots back into place.

“Oh.” He says.

“The barrier,” Fuku starts, thinking first, _broken_ , then, _shattered_ but neither of those seems to fit. “The barrier is gone.” 

He laughs, an ashy chuckle that brushes the possibility of dissolving into tears. 

“So it is.” 

He reaches out and she leans into him and he wraps his arms around her. Her head in the crook of his shoulder, she feels him shake with another burst of laughter. His grip around her tightens and she holds onto him too, a hand fisted in the fabric of his shirt. 

“So, now what?” She asks and Grillby unwinds his arms from around her. 

“I should call your uncle, make sure that he’s alright.” He stands, one hand pressed to the wall as he helps Fuku to her feet with the other. Fuku watches as he makes his way behind the counter, each step a little firmer and more confident. 

There’s a rotary dial phone mounted besides the shelves. Grillby takes the phone from it’s cradle and turns the dial, Fuku stands still and listens to the plastic hiss as it rewinds back to one, ready for the next number. 

“I’ll be right back.” She walks through the kitchen door, to the stairs in the back, heading for the small apartment just above the restaurant. She unlocks the front door and steps inside. The living room is cast in a gloom, no light coming from beyond the closed blinds. She lingers in the doorway, looks into the kitchen — her gaze skimming over darkened shapes till she spots the neon green clock above the stove. A little past midnight. Nearing one a.m. She continues down the hall to her bedroom. 

She finds her phone on her desk and ignores the slight tremble in her fingers as she dials Ska’s number. She stands a little off center in the room, plush carpet beneath her feet, facing the window. The phone pressed to her ear as she listens to it start to ring. The blinds of her window are tugged up. She can see pine trees beyond the glass. The dark silhouettes of trees against indigo and for a moment, the space around her lapses, carpet gone beneath her feet and she can smell sap, can feel the brush of nettles on her arms and at the base of her neck, the scrape of bark beneath her palm. 

The phone keeps ringing. 

She blinks, no longer amongst the trees and stares down at the carpet. Normally a shade of flaming pink, now turned violet in the low light. She hangs up as the fourth ring begins. She clenches and unclenches her hands into fists, trying to ease the worsening tremble in her hands. _It’s hectic out._ She thinks, _I just woke up. Ska probably just hasn’t gotten up yet._

She always slept in late anyway. 

Fuku sticks her phone in her pocket and heads back downstairs. 

Grillby’s still on the phone, his back to the kitchen door, so Fuku walks around the counter until she’s in his line of sight. He turns to face her and gives a slight nod. “He’s alright.” He says to her, then into the receiver, “Heats — I’ll have to let you go.” There’s a slight pause between the next words, “I will. Keep in touch, I expect to hear from you within a few hours.” He returns the phone to its cradle and looks back at Fuku, “The barrier is truly gone.” The flames of him sparking as he speaks, turning so very bright. 

Fuku nods and sits down on a bar stool, rubbing her eyes with one hand while taking out her phone with the other. She sets it on the bar top and swallows. She doesn’t mean to speak but the words slip out on her next exhale.

“Ska’s not answering her phone. I can’t get a hold of her —“ She rubs at her eyes again, clears her throat. “Which, I know, I get it that she’s fine. But still,” She cuts off the rest of the words and watches Grillby’s demeanor change, just a fraction. A shift in his shoulders, speaking in a softer tone. 

“I’m sure she’s alright.” He says, coming around to sit besides her. “She might not have woken up yet, or she might be unable to answer a call.”

“I know.” Fuku says. 

“Heats said there’s a lot going on in Hotland right now. Some monsters have already left, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ska's family went with them. You know that her mother isn’t the kind of person who would hesitate at the chance to leave.” He pauses and Fuku nods. “What’s Uncle Heats doing now?” 

“He’s packing. I said it was entirely up to him when he left, that he could go now if he wanted, but once he’s finished packing he’ll come down here and help us.”

Fuku blinks, everything seeming to go very still for a moment. 

“When are we leaving?” 

“In just a few days.” Grillby inclines his head. “Is that alright?” And she laughs. 

“Yeah, yeah. That’s fine.” 

—

Fuku dozes off. Wakes with her arms folded beneath her head, cheek pressed to the bar top. She glances at the window at the front of the restaurant, the snow outside glimmers. She turns back around, the rest of the restaurant seemingly deserted but her gaze snags on the stretched rotary phone cord — black plastic pulled taunt around a corner, disappearing through the kitchen door. Fuku slides off the bar stool and eases open the kitchen door, Grillby standing just inside, the phone cradled in his shoulder as he jots something down on a slip of paper. 

He glances up as Fuku slides into the room. 

“I didn’t want to wake you.” He says, tilting his head away from the receiver and she nods, continuing on up the stairs. Blinking back sleep with each step, she shakes her head as she walks through the front door. 

The clock above the stove reads a little past five a.m. There’s a muddled exhaustion in her as she stares at the digits. Still trying to pry her thoughts from sleep. She turns and heads down the hall. 

She grabs a coat from the closet. Pulls her phone from her pocket and dials Ska’s number while gathering coins scattered throughout the room, finding them in the back of desk drawers, underneath the bed, in the pockets of day old pants. She hangs up on the fifth ring, puts her phone and the coins in her coat pocket.

Fuku goes back downstairs, the kitchen now empty. She finds Grillby at the bar, with papers laid out before him, the phone still in the crook of his shoulder. 

“I’m going out.” She says when he looks up. “I tried calling her again — she isn’t answering, I’ll be safe.”

He hesitates but then nods. 

“I know, just be careful too.” 

“I will.” She leans over the counter, wraps an arm around him briefly before stepping back and heading out the front door. 

She stands in the doorway outside. The silence of the morning seeming to ring, she looks up and down the street. The homes she can glimpse from here are dark. Most of the snow is untouched, save for the trails of foot prints leading out of town. She starts walking and glances back as she makes the first turn around a street corner — the restaurant becoming steadily obscured, first by other buildings, then pines and then simply distance and time. 

She descends the slope leading to the River Person’s bank, weaving her way amongst the trees, gripping branches for support with each unsteady step. The snow beneath her is frosted over with ice, becoming more slick as the river comes closer. 

Fuku finds herself expecting to the bank to be empty. But they are there. Kneeling in the front of their boat, which sways slightly in small waves. She reaches for her coat pocket, starts unzipping it as she gets to the edge of the bank and they turn their head in her direction. She can hear the hiss of shifting silk as they move. 

Their face is lost to the shadows of their hood.

“I don’t think that’s necessary.” They say at the first glimpse of gold. “After all, it’s such a joyous day.” 

Fuku hesitates, coins heavy in her palm and hand halfway out of her pocket. 

“Go ahead.” They say, starting to rise from the front of the boat. Standing and standing and standing. By the time she’s returned the coins to her pocket, zipped it back up and climbed into the boat the River Person has finished standing up. 

She cannot see where their shoulders end and where the shadows of the cavern begin. 

She settles in the bottom of the boat rather than taking a seat on the strip of wood supplied, the edge of it presses against her shoulders. But it’s safer down here, less chance of being splashed should they gain enough speed to create higher waves. 

“Where shall we be going today?” The River Person asks. 

“Hotland.” Fuku says, tucking her arms against her chest, watching her light green glow bathe the bottom of the boat. 

“And we’re off.” The boat lurches forward and she tilts her head back, resting it on the seat and stares up at the cavern ceiling, watching as the tree branches become thinner and thinner until they no longer stretch out into her sight and by then the ceiling can no longer be distinguished. No longer placed in space. 

That, she thinks, is a little like a sky. 

—

Ska had said once that they were the children after the war. She said this in a way that meant that they should be grateful for being the _after_. They were trapped beneath the earth, but also protected by it.

They had been standing in the kitchen, Fuku taking out tubs of ice cream from the freezer to make milkshakes with, scooping it into tall glasses while Ska spoke in hushed tones. Fuku took down two bottles of gin from the shelves — she’d grown up around liquor her whole life and knew to take from two bottles instead of one to make it less noticeable that anything had gone missing — and mixed in a shot measured from two bottles into the whip cream and stirred, then poured the whip cream over the ice cream and handed Ska her glass. 

They went back out into the restaurant and sat at the bar. The lights had dimmed, bulbs of orange flame hung in the corners of the room, casting flickering shadows. 

Fuku knew she didn’t have to worry about Grillby coming down to find them here, not that he’d be mad if he did, but he’d been up late, so they didn’t have to worry about that. 

Sans had come by after hours again. That was why Grillby went to bed late. Sans came by late fairly often, he was a good customer, great regular and practically a family friend at this point. 

She’d come downstairs once, needing help with an essay for English, and Sans had been asleep at the bar. His arms tucked beneath his head, shoulders rising and falling in a slow, steady pace. Grillby stood at the other end of the bar, wiping down menus and cleaning the last of that days glasses. He’d looked up at the sound of her footsteps and nodded so she went and sat across from him at the bar and he came around and sat beside her, read over the essay she’d written.

They’d been working on it for about half an hour, speaking softly so as not to wake him. Sans lurched upright with a shout, falling backwards off the barstool. A flare of bright, bright blue light shattering the bottles and glasses on the shelves behind the bar. 

Grillby had been quick, on his feet, tugging Fuku to him to shield her from flying shards. She’d been quick too, raising a wall of forest green flame over his back to shield him. But there’d been a moment where she glimpsed Sans over her father’s shoulder.

That bright blue light leaking from his left eye socket. His hands clenched and shaking with a heaving chest. Something wild and raw and scared in him as he sank down into the pile of glittering glass around him. She watched the magic trickle then stop beneath his hands.

But she ducked her head and closed her eyes when the tears started. Soft, nearly inaudible waves of hiccups and gasps, fading with each passing second. 

“Are you okay?” Grillby asked, tone taunt. 

“Y — yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine. Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine.” 

The wall of forest flame she’d summoned, that had shielded him slowly simmered, sparks and ash drifting to the floor with his words. 

She felt his shoulders sag, arms get a little looser and after a moment he unwound himself from around her and picked his way across the restaurant to where Sans sat, his chest still heaving but tears dried, amongst the glass. 

“I’m sorry — I hadn’t meant too, oh, shit. Shit. Grillby, I’m sorry —“ Sans gaze slid from Grillby and he saw Fuku from where she sat at the bar and his breathing stopped all together. 

Then started again, hitched and frantic. 

“Oh my god, oh my god, your kid. Holy shit, Grillby. Are you okay? Oh my god. Your kid. Is Fuku okay? Is she —”

Grillby leaned down, offered Sans a hand and helped him to his feet.

“We’re both fine. Sans. It’s okay. Neither of us are hurt.” His tone was firm, cutting through Sans rapid words.

Fuku swallowed, walked across the room, tried to ignore the slight tremor in her steps. And if her magic was a little more prominent, a little more at the ready, humming beneath her palms as she told Sans she was really okay, neither of them mentioned it. 

So Grillby let Sans stay after hours more regularly than he would have any other customer. But his gaze was keener, he looked at Sans and knew now what he was looking for. And Sans came by more often and Grillby went to bed later more frequently. 

Ska had placed so much emphasis on the fact that they were the after. 

Ska’s mother had been raised during the war.

Even though she’d been very, very young when it started — monsters aged differently then humans and fear tended to make you grow quicker, it made memories stick when they otherwise wouldn’t have — she remembered it. 

Her mother had grown with war grafted into her. She grew with scars and never a full nights sleep. She grew with a loose mind, awake at the slightest sound, suspicious at the slightest movement or glance cast in her direction. 

Her mother had woken up screaming before, Ska said. Woken up shouting and hollering with bursts of magic at her fingertips although it was stone instead of light that she summoned. That was what Ska’s kind did. They conjured earth and dirt and sand and stone no matter the difficulty or apparent absence and they forged it to their benefit — and her mother had woken up every single night that week. 

Ska had run into her mother’s bedroom, her younger brother at her heels, that first night. Then the boy lingered in the doorway. Hid in his room by the end of the week, trying to sleep through the shouts, trying to ignore the ways the walls shook when stone met plaster. 

Ska had managed to wake her mother properly each night, shake off the dreams through words or her own hesitant magic. She soothed her brother after and made sure he went to bed relaxed, unafraid, feeling safe. 

But after all, they were just children. There was only so much they could do — “I can wake her up, but I can’t make the nightmares go away. I can’t make sure she doesn’t get them, or, that she isn’t scared to sleep or that she isn’t so, _so_ exhausted in the morning.” 

They were just children with parents who never got a full nights sleep for different reasons. 

Ska raised a hand and rubbed at her temple, trying to ease a starting headache. Fuku reached out, took that hand as Ska lowered it and set their intertwined fingers on the bar top. 

“How about we go to bed?” Fuku suggested and Ska nodded, eyelids drooping and she pushed away her glass with its ice cream half melted and pooling in the bottom. She dragged a finger through the condensation on the bar top and watched the reflection of flames flicker in the stream she’d made. 

“Do you think we’ll ever get the surface?” She asked, not raising her head. 

There was the impulse in Fuku’s chest to say yes. But she remained silent, let that answer settle and fade. She swallowed, looking from her own glass to Ska and her’s hands. 

“I don’t know.” She said, blinking. Suddenly aware of the limited space around them — the restaurants walls closer, pressing against her sides. The town itself was condensed. The surrounding pines were stunted, the top branches brushed a cavern ceiling somewhere. She realized then, vividly, that there was no sky above them, only dirt and stone. She swallowed again. “Do you want to?” The silence that met her question stretched.

“I don’t know.” Ska said, closing her eyes. She exhaled, her breathing unwound her rigid posture. Fuku slid off the bar stool, still holding Ska’s hand. Fuku took their glasses from the bar top with her other hand and and headed for the kitchen door. 

The orbs of flames faded out in their corners as Fuku passed through the door, she glanced back only to see a darkened restaurant. She left their glasses, rinsed out, in the sink.

They crept up the stairs in the back of the kitchen, heading for the small apartment above. 

Their shoulders heavy, leaning into each other, their clasped hands brushing the tops of their legs occasionally. Fuku eased open the front door and they padded down the hall, bare feet making no sound on carpeted floors.

Fuku opened her bedroom door and Ska went in first, collapsed onto Fuku’s bed and moved only to pull up a quilt, cram a pillow beneath her head. Fuku shut her bedroom door and followed, crawling into bed along side Ska and settling at her side. Ska let the quilt fall down over their shoulders, eased a pillow beneath Fuku’s head and wrapped an arm around her, pulled her closer. 

They slept like that. Tangled together. Arms around each other, hands loosely intertwining again at some point. 

They slept soundly.

—

The front of the boat scrapes the shoreline and Fuku raises her head, feeling the groan of gravel through the wood as they wash further up shore. 

“This is it.” The River Person says, turning to look over their shoulders as they speak. They offer up a hand. Fuku blinks, then takes it, using their grasp to steady herself as she climbs out of the boat.

“Thank you.” She says, reaching for her pocket. 

“There’s no need.” But she holds firm to the River Person’s hand, taking the coins from her pocket and pressing them into their palm. 

“This is for more than just today.” She says, curling their fingers over the gold. “Consider it a thank you for all the other trips.” She lets go and takes a step back. Their hand remains upright for a moment, then they tuck it into the presumed pockets of their robes. 

“Alright.” They say, “You’re welcome.” 

Fuku smiles and walks further up shore. The heat of the land already pressing at her back. The air is brittle, dust rising with each step and it’s only a short time until the occasional buildings around her become more and more frequent. Then she’s walking amongst the streets of the city.

It’s still early morning. A little past six a.m. according to her phone. 

New Home is one of the more advanced civilizations within the underground.

As such, they are the city that has something closest to resembling dawn compared to the other towns with their permanent quality of light. The street lamps of New Home dim and brighten according to the time and the lights within the buildings do this too. So with the increasing light as she walks, it’s quite easy to imagine a rising sun. 

But the streets are not empty like they’d been in Snowdin. She can see other monsters coming out of their homes with boxes and bags, she can hear shouts as she rounds streets corners — not shouts of panic or fear, but of joy. She sometimes has to step aside for groups of friends that are making their way out of the city, out of the underground, carrying each others bags and sharing food and holding hands and laughing. 

She steps aside for a few individuals who are entirely alone too, who have nothing more than the clothes on their backs but still walk with that determined beat in their steps to leave this place once and for all. 

She makes her way through the crowds, but she’s looking too. A glimpse of violet or for the point of a horn or a set of shoulders that she’d recognize anywhere. But her peering into crowds amounts to nothing. She stops outside Ska’s apartment building, the cobblestone steps are cracked. There’s a bit of grass growing between the stones. 

Fuku stares at the buzzer she’d normally use, a hand raising instinctively towards it but the front door to the building is ajar so she just slips inside. 

The security guard’s station in the lobby is empty too. There’s a small paper sign taped to the glass of the booth. It reads: **BE BACK NEVER!!**

She smiles at that and heads up stairs.

Ska’s apartment is on the fourth floor, the door unlocked and opened. 

Ska’s mother is not the kind of woman to leave doors ajar and when she rarely does, Ska is the kind of daughter to pull them closed and lock them. But Fuku still knocks and when silence meets the sound she steps inside, shutting the door behind her. 

“Hello?” And again only silence greets her. 

She glances around the kitchen, with it’s peeling tiled floors and pale lilac walls. The cupboards are all thrown open. There’s a box of cereal on the counter, but it’s tipped over, with it's MTT shaped marshmallows spilling out onto the floor. They crunch underfoot as she walks further in. The cupboard beneath the sink is open too, plastic bags inside plastic bags leaking onto the floor.

She heads down the hall. Ska’s mother and her brother’s room are open, all in the same disarray. Ska’s room is the last at the end of the hall, the door thrown open too, most of the room visible from a distance. It becomes quickly apparent that no one is inside but Fuku still slows her pace, trying to glimpse the rest of the room as slowly as she can.

She lays a hand on the doorframe and lets her postures sag, breath leaving her in a sigh. The room is truly empty. 

She walks into the room. Stares down at the patterned carpet beneath her feet. Then looks around. The closet door is opened, all the drawers on the desk are pulled out, the bedsheets are thrown back and Fuku turns so she’s facing the door and collapses down on Ska’s bed. 

She just sits for a moment. Limbs heavy. 

Then she tugs out her phone, fiddles with the screen and calls Ska’s number, raises the phone to her ear and closes her eyes at the ringing. 

Then, very faintly, the cords of a guitar begin to play. Muffled as though through something. Fuku opens her eyes and stares around the room, her gaze circling back to the desk and she slides off the bed, crawls along the floor and the guitar becomes louder and louder. 

The bottom drawer of the desk is closed, all the drawers above it pulled open, pens and pencils and paper scatter the space around her. Fuku tugs open the bottom drawer and the guitar blares it’s chorus. 

She stares down at Ska’s phone, vibrating and singing its way across the bottom of the drawer. 

Then she laughs, lays her face in her hands and laughs. Because of course. Of course Ska had been one drawer off. Had to leave right then. Fuku wipes at her eyes, shifts so she’s sitting down and leans against the wood. 

She reaches into the drawer and pulls the phone out, lets the guitar's rift stretch a little further and answers the call. 

“Hello?” She asks and she can hear her own voice crinkle through her phone, back where she left it on Ska’s bed. She hangs up. Gets up and climbs back onto the bed and sits there. Her phone in one hand, Ska’s in the other. 

She swallows and thinks, if there was any real emergency she’d find a way to call. She’s got my number and Grillby’s number and she’s with her mom, her brother. She’s alright. _She's alright_.

Fuku sets Ska’s phone down and dials Grillby’s number on hers. It isn’t even half way through the first ring when he answers. She listens to the crackle of flame over the line then clears her throat. 

“She’s not here.” Her voice trembles a little on the last two words so she clears her throat again, curls her hand into a fist in her lap and grips the phone tighter, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat. 

“It’s alright.” Grillby says, “Fuku, it’s alright. She’s just left with her family —” 

“But.“ Fuku bites the word short, clenches her jaw against the tremble in her voice.

“Where else would they have gone?” He asks, tone kind and reassuring and so very reasonable. She closes her eyes and inhales, exhales and listens to his words. “Nothing bad could’ve happened to them. They just went to the surface a bit early. It’s alright.” She breathes again and opens her eyes, throat still tight. 

“I know." He starts to say something more but she speaks over him, shaking her head, clearing any lingering thoughts. “I’ll be home soon, I just want to look around a bit more.” She lowers the phone and after slight hesitation, hangs up. 

Fuku puts her phone besides Ska’s and goes to the closet. Rummaging around in the bottom, she finds a beaten backpack and hauls it out, empties the left over school supplies onto the floor. Adding more pens and pencils and erasers to those already scattered everywhere.

If they left in a rush, then they left with hardly anything and with the slim chance of Ska ever coming back — Fuku looks back at the bed, then at the closet. 

She puts the backpack on the floor and leans over the bed frame, peering in the space between frame and wall and then reaching down into it, pulling a small teddy bear from the depths. She brushes the webs off from it’s head and places it in the backpack. 

Leaving in a rush means having time for clothes and food but not enough time to grab the stuff you want, the stuff you would’ve found a way to carry had you had just five more minutes. 

She takes a pink fleece blanket from the bed — something passed down to Ska by her grandmother, who’d been gone for nearly a century now, the teddy bear was another relic from her too — and Fuku folds the blanket up, lays it in the backpack over the teddy bear. 

She goes back to the closet, flicking through the hangers inside. She takes a lace dress from the back and folds that up too. Thinking briefly of Ska beneath multicolor strobe lights and laughter and singing and dancing. She holds the dress a moment longer, then puts it in the backpack. 

She takes a leather jacket from the hangers next. Spikes decorate the shoulders, she turns the fabric over in her hands and smiles. The jacket was something bought in a store but the spikes had been pried from a bike chain they’d found at the garbage dump and then sewn and glued to the leather. 

Fuku puts the jacket on over her coat, zipping it up halfway and smoothing down the collar to stop the spikes form poking her. She grabs the backpack from the floor, puts it on her shoulder and grabs the two phones from the bed, looking around the room once more. 

Her gaze snags on a photo on the wall. 

It's a photo strip they’d gotten from a photo booth at the mall. Four images of them smiling and pressed together, arms wrapped around each other. There’s a faint outline left behind from another strip besides the first. The machine had printed three copies and Ska took two home that day and then she took one with her when leaving for the surface. Stopping in the midst of chaos to pry the photos away from the wall.

Fuku steps forward and takes the other strip off the wall, slides it into the pocket of Ska's jacket and walks from the room. 

—

She’d met Ska years ago. 

They shared classes together. English and Science and Gym. They picked each other for group projects, for gym partners. They sat together in school wide assemblies and became experts at picking each out in a crowd and from a distance. Just a glimpse of violet or a spark of green flame. 

It was a friendship that wound its way up through their lives, started out simply in companionable silences.

Fuku walks back to Snowdin, wearing Ska’s leather jacket over her own coat and carrying a backpack with the things that Ska never got to grab or would have never left behind if there'd been the time to take them. 

She raises a hand and drags it along the wall as she walks, feels the grooves of stone beneath her fingers and she can see the gleam of gems embedded in the rock. She stops. They had been trapped beneath the earth, but also protected by it. It may not have been a home by choice, but it was a home regardless. 

Something tugs in her chest and she wonders, briefly, if it is wrong to miss this place.

Fuku steps back from the wall, continues on around to the corner and finds herself with a field of flowers unfurling before her. The sound of rushing water rises in the distance, the shimmer of the waterfalls is visible at the edge of her vision. She makes her way amongst the flowers, staring at the fireflies that rise up from beneath the petals. 

She kneels down before a bundle of them. Echo flowers. With their vivid teal petals. She leans in, tilting her head to listen but the only noise that escapes them is white noise. Words or sounds repeated so many times they dissolved into static and nothing. 

Fuku lays a hand on the petals. The iridescent sheen of them mixing with the glow of her own flame. She scoots in closer, head inclined and whispers to the flowers, stands up as they begin to whisper amongst themselves, her voice spreading out. 

She wonders if there is magic on the surface. If somewhere, the echo flowers grow beneath sunlight. Or if they took all the magic with them when they were all forced beneath the earth and perhaps, if they did take all the magic, then there's a bit of satisfaction in that, to think that the humanity had lost something too, albeit nothing comparable to the loss they felt, but still just a fraction was a comforting thought.

Maybe the fact they'd lost something made it okay to miss this.

She continues walking through the flowers, her own voice guiding her home. 

She closes her eyes. The glow of the echo flowers still visible beneath her eyelids and she thinks of multicolored strobe lights. 

For a moment the rush of water melts into the strings of a guitar, of drums as they beat the chorus and she can see Ska dancing beneath the lights; arms raised, the hem of her dress unfurling as she spins, laughing and Fuku’s cheeks starting to ache with her grin. 

Ska reaches out, takes Fuku’s hand and pulls her in. 

That hand moves on to Fuku’s shoulder, while the other goes to her waist and Fuku winds her arms around Ska’s neck, beaming. Ska’s eyes roaming over Fuku’s features while the lights around them blinked scarlet to lavender to periwinkle. 

“What?” Fuku asks. 

“You just look like something else, underneath all this. With these lights and that dress.” Fuku ducks her head, glances down at the intricate hem of her own lace dress. 

“Oh.” She breathes and Ska hums and Fuku looks up, meeting Ska’s gaze once more as they turn in a small, slow circle. 

“Just look.” Ska continues, unwrapping one of Fuku’s arms from around her neck. She intertwines their fingers, holds them at eye level, then up to the light.

Fuku watches the back of her hand as the lights switch. Periwinkle to cobalt to an alizarin crimson. But that light is reflected within the green flame of her hand. Creating fractured light. A myriad of colors.

“You are so beautiful.” Ska says, in a precisely soft way that makes Fuku loose her footing. 

She stumbles but Ska’s grip tightens, holding her upright as she regains her balance. Ska stares down at her, smile blossoming in to a smirk. 

“Good to know I can sweep you off your feet.” Fuku laughs and smiles back.

“You already have.” Ska blinks, a bit of color rising in her cheeks and Fuku laughs again, leans her head in the crook of Ska’s shoulders while Ska’s grip on her waist tightens and they keep on turning. 

—

The boxes are piled up out front. Grillby's covering tables with sheets and Fuku sits at the bar, watching as the fabric balloons and drifts back down over the table tops. Nondescript memories flicking through her mind with each table covered. The voices of those she grew around, toddling through her father’s restaurant. She watches him move on, drape another cloth over another table and thinks of dogs. Bushy white tails sticking out from beneath gleaming armor and the _thwap_ of cards being laid out. 

Then the tables are covered and he’s peeling signs off the front window. Small bits of colored paper — signs for new drinks, new food or discounts. She thinks of standing outside that window, bundled up in a scarf and a hat and mittens for winter's slight chill. She thinks of stretching up to hang lights, the soft golden glow of them mixing with their flames and Grillby's smile as he reached up to pin the string of lights in place. 

She blinks, Grillby having stopped in front of the window, he turns his head as the front door opens and Sans walks in. 

“Hey, you still open?” Sans pause, then continues, “I figured I could come by and help you guys finish, uh, packing up. Carry a few bags and all that. Consider it a part of payment towards my tab.” Grillby shuffles the papers in his hands and shakes his head. 

“You’ll still need to pay that.” He says, but there’s a smile in his voice. An ease in his posture. "But the help is much appreciated." Sans grins and crosses the room, pulls down a backpack from the bar. He heaves it onto his back, adjusting the straps and glances towards the window, at the boxes piled up out front. Grillby follows his gaze and sighs. “Hopefully we won’t have to take too many trips.” 

“I don’t think so. I know a short cut.” Sans heads back out the front door, pausing by the pile outside to grab a box then another when he manages to hold the first. Then he’s gone. Presumably having just walked around the corner.

Fuku takes a backpack, then a duffle bag in each hand. She lingers though, sliding off the barstool with unnecessary precision in her steps, her gaze roaming over the walls. There's a string of webs in the far corner, creating a silhouette of where the jukebox had been. It now resides in the kitchen, to be left behind when leave. She stares at the cracked upholstery of the booths, with their peeling leather and leaking yellowed stuffing. She looks down at the floor besides the booths, at the gash in the wood and remembers dragging something along when she was younger, shrieking with delight at the noise produced.

She remembers the regret overwhelming any joy when she'd seen the mark left behind.

She knows that this is not the last time she'll stand here, in this restaurant, knows she'll be back to grab the rest of their belongings but something fiddles in her chest, rotates and unhinges. She looks over to where Grillby stands and finds him watching her.

“Are you going to miss this?” She asks.

He folds up the papers in hand and slips them into his pocket, then nods. 

“Yes.” He takes a step forward and smooths down the sheet on the nearest table top. “Yes, I’ve wanted to go for quite a long time, but I will miss it.” He pauses. “There are other places to live though. Places we can pick.” He walks over to where she stands, taking the last backpack from the bar. Then he reaches out and takes one of the duffle bags from her hands, carefully unwinding her too tight fingers from around the straps. He hoists the bag onto his shoulder. “It will be better up there. There will be sunlight and there won't be an end to the space that we can have."

Instead of sunlight she thinks of the iridescent stones and flowers of Waterfall, of the brightening and dimming lights of Hotland, of her own and Grillby's flames.

"There is so much more to be had on the surface. So much more for us." She blinks, looking up at him. The flames of his features vivid and his tone is earnest.

"Okay." She says and he takes her hand, she holds it and they head out through the front door together. Fuku turns her head as they step through the doorway, embedding the sight of the restaurant in her mind. It's scratched mahogany floors and and aged booths and low hanging lights. Vacant now except for the sheets, blanketing table tops and memories. She thinks _home_ but something unwinds in her chest alongside the grief. Knowing there is more than this. That this is not an ending.

Sans is out front, gathering more boxes. The pile is relatively diminished compared to what it had been a few minutes before and Grillby stares at Sans, an expectant expression rising in his features. Sans glances at him, adjusting his grasp on the box in his arms.

“I told you I've just got a few short cuts — I said it wouldn't take long." He hooks his chin over the top of the cardboard and Grillby goes to take it from him but Sans shakes his head, a flare of magic rising around the box's edges. "Papyrus is keeping an eye socket on your stuff on the surface. We’re all in the same area for now. Heats place is actually pretty close to where I'm staying.” Grillby nods.

“That’s good.” He says.

—

They leave through the eastern gate. From there, it's a short hike up an underground slope. The earth beneath her feet is compact and the sliver of visible sky at the gaining horizon is a dark indigo. Her steps stutter at the first breeze, the air faintly warm. She laughs a little, watching her flames shift and curve with the draft. She continues on, Grillby at her side. Their footsteps ringing and resinating around them. 

Then there’s movement at the opening above. A silhouette against the sky and Fuku stops, the bag in her hand slipping and falling to the floor with a dull thump and the point of a horn shimmers in the star light. 

There’s a flash of violet and she holds out open arms as Ska comes skidding down the slope to meet her. She wraps her arms tight around Ska, staggering with the velocity of the embrace, just managing not to fall over, spinning slightly. One hand comes to rest on the back of Ska’s head, the other curled against the small of her back and they’re both laughing. 

“You’re alright.“ Fuku breathes. Ska laughs again, breathless too, pressed cheek to cheek. 

“I'm alright.” Ska says, taking half a step back. “I’m sorry — we left as soon as we woke up. Mom didn’t want to risk the barrier closing again and Fu — I tried, I tried to let you know.” Her hands rise and she cups either side of Fuku's face, frames her features with her hands and exhales, long and drawn out. "Thank god, you are alright." She steps forward again, wrapping her arms back around Fuku and then taking her hand, intertwining their fingers together. Ska kneels and picks up the dropped duffle bag. She slings it over her shoulder. "Oh, it's just stunning. You have to see." She tugs on her hand, once, and they're both running up the remainder of the slope.

The sky expanding more and more above them, the solid indigo blossoming into a multitude of blues, speckled with pinpricks of light and they're above the surface.

But they don't stop running.

Fuku runs with the curve of the wind, feet skimming over gravel, over damp dirt and over grass and over greenery. Through a patch of ferns, pines rising around them. Fuku weaves amongst the branches, ducking with ease as she goes — she's grown amongst trees all her life after all, but these pines, with thick, lush branches seem healthier. Undeterred in their growth.

They slow, making it through the last of the trees and find themselves at the edge of a field. Fuku can glimpse silhouettes from where they stand, the forms of other monsters and hear far off voices. But on the edge of it all, it is just them.

The moon is finally visible. Nearly full, with an iridescent rainbow arched around it.

"Oh." Fuku whispers, her gaze amongst the stars. She laughs, a shaking, startled noise from somewhere within her chest and the flames of her brighten, sparks floating up into the night air. 

"Yeah." Ska says, squeezing Fuku's hand. Fuku lowers her head, glances at Ska and they're both still. Just letting the night rise around them. Fuku steps closer, her hand rising to cradle the back of Ska's head, she leans in, her lips grazing Ska's cheek and she rests their foreheads together. "I missed you so." Ska whispers, her eyes open, roaming over Fuku's features in the low light.

A breeze rises up around them and Fuku shivers with the next inhale. The realization — the reality of it all, the world around them finally being accessible. Something she can touch. She remains standing, despite it all. She closes her eyes, exhales and marvels in the pure, utter relief of Ska's presence. She opens her eyes and meets Ska's gaze, then tilts her head just so and kisses her.

Fuku feels Ska's lips twist into a smile beneath hers.

She smiles too.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are greatly appreciated.


End file.
